tl;dr – I wrote a school-style essay, because I was inspired (read: bored or procrastinating).

I’ve been only mildly productive of late. Writing is very much a process and on some days it just happens without any help required, but there are other days where the screen just looks like an empty landscape that could never – ever – be home to anything. Sometimes I’m just not feeling it. 

For something different I decided to throw out something short today. Even though Book Three has taken primary residence at the forefront of my thoughts, I still haven’t quite settled into working on it again. Mentally, I’m winding down off another year while also gearing up for the next. I’m also probably reading too many books at once to have a clear line of any narrative. So, instead I thought I’d have a go at a Context piece. With 2016 serving as the final year for Context in the VCE, it feels like as good a time as any to start turfing around some ideas. We use ‘whose reality?’ as our framing topic. Additionally, just to keep things interesting, we’ve decided to introduce a new text… for one year. 

I used the prompt: ‘None of us have complete control over our personal narrative.’ 

Although… When I say ‘used’, I mean that very loosely. In fact I hadn’t refreshed myself on it and instead just worked off the ideas of control and narrative. If there’s anyone who reads this and is confused about the whole nature of the task, you wouldn’t be alone. At its essence the aim is to develop a piece of writing in a persuasive/expository/creative (or any combination of these) style which explores the framing topic (whose reality?) with nods at a specified text (in this case, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe). Beyond this, students are encouraged to explore the themes and ideas of the text as a springboard from which they can unpack their own ideas about the prompt and the framing topic. 

Sound messy? That’s because it is a bit. 

In order to preempt the messiness of the new text and head off some of my unfamiliarity with it, I thought I’d jump in the deep end and see what I could come up with in roughly an hour. 

Consider what follows as a very rough first draft (not that I’m sure there will be another distinct draft of this piece). It’s a bit ranty (as most first drafts are) and there are certainly some bigger connections that I could make to the actual topic (seeing as I worked with only the memory of it). Also, I can already see more places where I could make use of the text and where I could cut back on the philosophy in favour of some more development of the driving concern of the piece. All this aside, I think, for a first draft, this is okay. Have a read, or tune out and run away if you’re just desperate to forget school.

Great(?) Southern Land

“We are all punished, every day. This island is our punishment, this island and one another’s company, to the death.” Susan Barton, from J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Foe’.

It is with trepidation that I read the news these days. More often, I observe rather than read. I gather the hints of events – the echo of shots heard around the world – the mirage of the reality that exists beyond this small space I occupy. This is our ‘privilege’, this selective viewing, it is something that we have earnt through the wonder of having been born in this place and this time. A time when the narrative linguistics of the world are not etched in stone or punched out in ink, but are transient, shifting, things from which we can sample or ignore at will. It is our gift and our curse. We are at once consumers and creators, and the Australia of which we are a part has forgotten which is which.

Modernity is castaway on an island of the ego. There is nothing about this idea that should be surprising and yet that is perhaps only because it is something of which we have complete denial. One has only to point to the ubiquitousness of social media to emphasise the naivety of my position. However, I challenge you to demonstrate to me an account of true connection. The definition of the word here is important. I mean true in the sense that proof of identification, undeniable knowledge – not just understanding – can be demonstrated. I do not mean ‘true’ in the sense that the word is most commonly used, that is, to highlight mere thinly justified belief. You see, due to the way that humans understand the world, there can be no true connectedness between one thing or one person and another. Perceived associations are just that – perceived. As such, it is in this way that we are the creators of our life’s fundamental plot and cast. All elements of experience are necessarily created by us, as individuals, and then promptly relegated to the notion that they are consumed by us as observers of capital ‘T’ truth. 

The issue here is not a simple one to define. Only the other day was I faced with the position that if reality and narrative continuity is a construction, a creation, born of the individual yet bearing remarkable similarities to all other versions presented by unique people – then surely we can simply accept it? What purpose does it serve to challenge the very nature of understanding if no knowledge of the very nature of understanding can ever be had? An yet, the response is a simple one. It serves little purpose. But it highlights a problem. The problem is not simple. It is not to do with mere personal delusion insofar as it is to undermine the very universal narrative that we all demand when we voice an opinion. When Paul Farrell, writing for The Guardian, reflected that he understood why he was compelled to be involved in the Cronulla Riots, now, more than ten years on, can explore the event with a new perspective, we witness a narrative disruption. The author has redrafted the opening chapters of his story after we had read them and forged our way into the later repercussions. This about-face ‘effects’ us, it highlights the ‘cracks and chinks’ in our all-too-human grasp of cause and effect. Paul Farrell is trying to demonstrate that he has changed and yet a part of the universal narrative, the story held together with the tenuous ligaments and sinews of society, cannot fathom painting him with a new brush. We see it time and again. 

Once the chapter has gone to print, once we have selected the typeface of our history, we are awfully stubborn about changing anything. We are too often author’s who are unwilling – possibly incapable – of taking on constructive criticism and using it to reshape and reframe the narrative framework with which we understand the world. I watch Justin Troudouex welcome Syrian refugees with the disarming mantra: ‘Welcome to Canada. Welcome home.’ I see their tears and their tentative smiles and I despise my own country. Australian’s have bought into the madness of Coetzee’s Cruso. We – and I am deliberately painting us all with the one brush here – believe ourselves the indisputable kings of our beautiful island getaway. Alfred Korzybski famously sought to explain, through his general semantics, that ‘the map is not the territory’. His efforts were to demonstrate the necessity of symbolism in the process of making meaning and to highlight that all forms of communication and understanding were fundamentally symbolic rather than true. As individuals we have created a language of symbols – ideas, opinions, and ideals that represent the plot points of our personal narrative and seek to draw parallels between personal experience and universal experience. But because of the flimsy and inaccurate nature of linguistics and symbology, Australian’s have distorted some of the most important messages available to us. We have lost all conception of what is ‘right’ in the minds of people beyond our island kingdom. And, in our delusions of grandeur, we seek to bring the overwhelming majority to heel with our vision of acceptability and kindness – a vision whose foundation is steeped in denial and ignorance.

The disastrous truth is that we’re not kings at all. We’re castaways. Our stage cue in the universal narrative, the one agreed on by the rest of the world, will define us as insular, unkind, and mad. And until we can reconcile what we believe is acceptable eschatologically and what is truly acceptable we will be on the wrong side of history – castaways doomed to a punishment of sharing the company of our mad and deluded brethren.